Why My Book is Nothing But a House of Cards

The true purpose of memoir is to transform your tired old narratives into new meaning. In Boundless, my forthcoming memoir, I find personal liberation and a way to reinvent my own story about myself.

My memoir, Boundless, is nothing but a house of cards. 

Comes a moment in “Alice in Wonderland,” when Alice cuts through all the illusions. At this point in Lewis Carroll’s classic, Alice has been stretched and shrunk, vexed (Mad Hatter) and further vexed (Red Queen), plus played croquet with a deck of cards and sleepy flamingoes, which is probably not the look she was going for.

“Why, you’re nothing but a pack of cards!” Alice bursts out when she is put on trial, and when she does, the whole house of cards tumbles down on her. All the animals in her storied jury revert to their unmagical selves—mere unenchanted mice, frogs and birds. The cards swirl in a storm above her head.

None of this is real. None of this matters.

The subterfuge of memoir: No more old stories

If you sympathize with the trouble the narrator of Boundless gets in—that would be me! I must like trouble!—if you empathize with the emotional box she is in—that would be me! My own emotional enemy!—then my work here as author …